


Post-Human

by hellkitty



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Skin Hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 03:45:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1764437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For prompt 'skin hunger'. It's part zombie love story, part allegory of PTSD, all a little...weird. </p><p>This might not be to everyone/anyone's taste, and may not, in fact, be very good.  But I felt that incandescent burn while writing it that always tells me it is something I need to write, a story I had to tell, words spitting forth like a guilty confession from a split vein.  If it is nothing to you or anyone else it is that to me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post-Human

They kept asking it who he was, and it couldn’t answer. It didn’t understand the question. And not for lack of trying--it had no voice, no ability to make sounds other than grunts and whine, like an animal. And it didn’t know, itself. It tried to think back to before the Then, and it was a blurry moving mass of grey, without names or clear lines. No names came up, no identity, not even a clear picture. It had no idea who it was. They called him 309, because that was the number on the front of the stained, ragged coveralls they found it in.

It knew no other name that it could recall though it knew it'd had one once. And a number is as good as a name when it's not your real name, when you’re not entirely sure you’re a person.

It knew only three things:

It knew what it was, or what the doctors of Then had told it it was: an experiment, a subject, a thing. It was the future of the war (what war?), or a failure (of what?) by turn.

And it knew pain. It knew only the doctors could bring it, with shocks and syringes, and sometimes he wondered if it couldn’t speak anymore because it had screamed its voice broken.

And hunger. 309 knew hunger, an insatiable, gnawing need in its belly, that whipped it wild sometimes, so that they’d gotten the habit of restraining it, wrists and ankles bound.

These were all 309 knew, but when the soldiers came, with their sweaty faces and dusty uniforms, it didn’t think these were the answers they wanted from it. It didn’t know where te doctors had gone. It didn’t know who it was. 309 only knew hunger and pain and that it was not a man but that maybe, it had been one, before.   It had learned a new kind of pain, after the doctors had left, because food stopped coming, too, and the Hunger grew, to take shape and form and voice, whispering and screeching at it, like a shadow dogging at its heels, and it had raved, clawing long gashes in the concrete walls, tearing the chains from their moorings, violent to fight it off.

_He has no spirit._

_But he’s the best result so far._

The doctors had left, so long ago that 309 had lost track of time. It hadn’t known they were leaving, just that time stretched impossibly long and they never came. It was easy to do in a room without windows, without light, where you could not even pretend to track day and night and when you didn't sleep. It was always night, and 309 grew so used to it that when the soldiers had brought it out, weighed down under manacles, it had been so blinded by sunlight 309 had fallen to its knees, squealing as the dilated eyes protested. It could only see in primary colors: red, blue, yellow, and the sunlight was a blinding assault of all of them, breaking what had been a uniform stretch of a thousand hues of grey. 

It is a terrible thing to hunger and be unable to die. But that was what--who--it was.

309 didn’t blame them for keeping it chained--the doctors had, after all, and it had attacked the soldiers. It hadn’t meant to: it been lost to the Hunger, smelling only life and blood on them, ears deafened by the roar of appetite and the grating of the steel door: a sort of madness of red and black bursting out. It had been wrong, and 309 felt it, with a sting of shame, and bore the heavy chains as meekly as it could, to the point one of the soldiers, the one with the great square chin and the habit of spitting, had scoffed, calling it a ‘sheep with teeth’. Even the one it had bitten, a wedge-faced man, had laughed, cradling his seeping arm.

They’d made a joke--the kind of joke soldiers made--and thrown a half-dead rat, something they’d found scuttling around the Station. And 309 had devoured it, grateful, gobbling it greedily, crunching the bones between his powerful teeth, sucking the blood, the muscle, bones, all of it. Their laughs turned a bit nervous, as though their joke somehow wasn’t so funny, when it had looked up, greedily licking the blood from ragged-nailed fingers, chin mottled with clotted red, importuning for more. It was disgusting, horrible, and it knew it, but the Hunger didn’t care. It cared for nothing but more. More food, more blood, more abasement, if needed.

_You wanted them to be obedient. He’s obedient._

_He’s broken._

309 had been locked away again. It remembered stumbling on a ramp, his feet feeling the industrial treads of decking: this time in a new place, with a tiny porthole, high up to the right, the chains bolted to the wall, restricting its ange. It hadn’t protested. It had been bound before, and it could see daylight, or at least the light of it stretching across the ceiling, something to distract from his endless hunger. Of such small things something like hope is born.

Something like hope, as it was something like human--twisted, mottled, and wrong.

At night, when the porthole showed only a sliver of stars, the door opened, and a wedge of light from the hallway silhouetted one of the soldiers. 309 shifted back, anxious, flashbacks to the doctors and how they’d send soldiers, other soldiers, to get it for a new round of ‘experiment’ strobing across his vision. Violence and light and noise and then pain, seemingly endless pain. And then the cell, again.

It had dared to hope it was free from that.

“Hey.” It was a soft word, an attempt at something like a conversation, doomed to fail. It was a female voice, and he craned forward, able to see, now, the way the hair was swept back behind her ears, the rounder jaw, the smaller hands, the rest lost under the heavy canvas of the combat jacket.

It didn’t move, unsure, and she moved into the room, squatting down on the far end of it, and then 309 heard a ‘schuss’ as she slid something--a plastic tray with a bell cover over a plate--toward him. It looked up.

“I didn’t like that, earlier. With the rat.” She tipped her head back to the door, indicating the other soldiers. “Jorvax is pissed, he got bit, but he’s always been an ass.”

It regretted biting that one and wanted to tell her it was the Hunger, an appetite made feral, but its voice only croaked as 309 lifted the cover. And it was a lie, besides. It may have been Hunger, but 309 was its agent. If something controls you, you are to blame, you are the body to be punished. That was how the world worked.

Food. Actual food, human food, not even the pastes and goos the doctors had fed, not another rat, or mockery of food. 309 fell on it, almost as greedily as the rat, something in the hollow of twisted chest twanging that someone gave it human food, thought of it as human. It wasn’t, was it? Had 309 ever been? It had had a life before the Then, that much 309 knew, but nothing of that, just watercolor flow of images, muddy brown and indistinct.

Had it been a criminal? Had it been a soldier? Maybe 309 had been a bad man, and this was his punishment. Maybe it had been a good man, and there was no moral center to the world. Maybe it had volunteered, but who would volunteer for this? These questions occupied 309 in the too much time it had had to think.

Did things think? Did things worry?

_So he can fight. When he wants to._

_Sir, he could rip your arms out of their sockets without trying._

Nothing could end the Hunger. 309 thought sometimes it could eat for years and still starve. But still, this helped, blunting the edge. It looked up, when it was done, self-conscious at the speed at which it had devoured it, messy, sloppy. If 309 had ever known how to eat normally, it had been forgotten, lost in the Then. It wanted to say ‘thank you’, but words had been lost, too, and it could only hope she could sense it, as 309 carefully pushed the tray back toward her, safely out of the range of the chains.

It couldn’t tell them, that the chains couldn’t hold it, that they were no better than a charm, a wish you hope would protect you from harm. 309 wished it, too, because despite their rough treatment, it didn’t want to hurt them, didn’t want to be lost to the Hunger again, itself. If 309 was good, if it behaved, maybe they would feed it again. Food. A rat. Anything. And maybe if they both believed the chains would be strong enough, they could all believe it into truth.

“I’ll bring you more tomorrow,” she said, moving to retrieve the tray. “I promise.” The words were like music, or some promise of a different language, and suddenly there was a tomorrow that had a thing to look forward to and time sprung into meaning again. It clutched that to its mind, like a trapped moth, as she scooped up the tray and left.

309 heard her voice again that night, raised loud in an argument, but even its hearing couldn’t penetrate well enough through the heavy steel door to make out words. Only that she was answering back to someone yelling at her, the one who had called 309 a sheep with teeth. Jorvax, maybe? It knew what names were, even if it had none of his own. But it preferred the voice it had heard in his cell, the promise, all of it, stirring that dangerous broken birdcage in the chest.

She brought more, when the sun was high in the sky this time, and watched it eat with a hard satisfaction, arms folded over her chest, as though she was winning an argument. 309 tried to eat more carefully this time, less sloppily, slower, less frantic to shove it down its throat, trying to show, see? I am civilized. Or was, once. Maybe.

It wasn’t sure it could convince itself of that, much less anyone else.

But she seemed content, watching 309 eat, and stayed sitting, even after it’d pushed the tray back. They looked at each other and it knew what she saw. 309 had seen itself in mirrors, seen the withered grey skin of its arms, the knuckles swelled and almost blue, nails jagged and long, like a thing more tree than human. it knew its face was no better, lips thinned and pulled back in a half-rictus that might have been a frozen laugh or a frozen scream, eyes sunken and black, entirely, as though the pupil had devoured everything. It had had hair--309 remembered it falling out, finding it dusting the shoulders of the coveralls, thin and brittle, and what it had left was sparse, tarnished white, enough to mock someone with the idea of hair. It was hideous, simply, purely, brutally, and it remembered in the Then, seeing this face for the first time with a shock of abjection, a denial, a refusal, ‘this is not me’ screaming through the bloodstream.

But it was 309, and the only thing it could remember being.

_Blood of the martyrs!_

_There are...aesthetic issues, yes. Traded for functionality._

It had wanted to die, when it saw itself. It didn't know what it'd looked like before--maybe handsome, maybe not--but it wasn't the ruin of beauty that appalled it, it was a primal, basic revulsion, a frantic attempt to escape from the grisly reminder of death, a thing that stank and looked like a charnel house that even in his expression of horror looked monstrous--teeth bared, gums receded like the dead.

It took 309 so many attempts to realize it couldn't die. And even after it had realized it, it kept trying, fitfully, as something to do, perhaps, to pass the time, or something to say to a God if he was there and watching, silently, 'I know I am an abomination. I am trying. I am trying.'.

It tried to bury those thoughts in looking at her: she was not young. Or she was, but past that first bloom of youth, old enough that her mouth was taking a downward turn at the corners, that her cheeks had lost some plumpness and glow. 309 couldn’t say if she was pretty--she was the only female he remembered seeing, so he had no scale, no comparison. She was just...there, eyes so blue they almost hurt to look at, her hair dark waves pulled behind her ears. It had a number on its coveralls, 309, she had a name, Esperay.

A real name, one that tied her to family and friends, one that was a word and not a string of numbers no one knew how to read--three oh nine? Thirty and nine? Three hundred nine? Even its name was flawed.

She said nothing, for a long time, and it found himself writhing under a new kind of agony, that of someone else’s judgment. She should just say it, 309 thought, something dull like a stone of anger in its throat. She should just say ‘you’re hideous’, ‘thing of the dead’, ‘monstrosity’, all the names it had heard before, or even some new ones, new insults, new repulsions. It thought it was going to tear itself out of the chains and shake her till she spoke, till she admitted it was loathsome, unspeakable, horrible, and it wrung its hands, twisting up the fabric of the coveralls they’d found it in, keeping itself still, channeling the agitation.

“I wish you could talk,” she said, finally. It disarmed 309, quelled the hot restlessness like a wash of cold water, like a flood, sweeping out from under it everything.

_Is he dead?_

_Technically. Legally. But not._

The third day, 309 overstepped itself, crossed over one of the mute rules they’d had between them. It was the Hunger, it told itself later, clogging thinking, wanting only...what it wanted. The Hunger was a scheming demon, shortsighted and cruel, and 309 was helpless in its wake.

It had pushed the tray back, but not far enough, so that she’d have to step into the range of chains to retrieve it. And she didn’t see the trap, or at least didn’t see how deliberate it was. She eyeballed the chains, reading their length, and then, with a suck of air, decided to risk it, stepping in to get the tray.

It struck, with the speed that had terrified and delighted the doctors, which had made it a challenge for five armed soldiers to take 309 down even half-dazzled by light and fresh air and unarmed and dressed in ragged coveralls. A grey hand struck out, wrapping around her wrist as she took up the tray.

The plastic tray, and the plate, and the bell cover, all of it tumbled to the floor, and she gave a noise, a squelch of a cry of fear, as though all the veneer had fallen off, the magic failed. 309’s eyes closed, for a long moment, its hand taking in the touch--the warmth of her skin, smooth and almost satiny under the wasted fingertips. It could feel life pulsing through it, thumb grazing at her veins, and this close, it could smell her, alive and afraid.

309’s eyes opened, and saw hers, brilliant blue and terrified, whites visible around them, in paled cheeks. It wanted to say it wouldn’t hurt her, didn’t want to, that all it wanted was...this, to touch life, to not be rejected or loathed, to be near to something not undead. It was all true, and the Hunger shifted to craving touch, more of her, but it pushed it back, pushed itself back, forcing iron grip around her wrist to release, coveralls bumping against the steel decking of the shuttle’s floor.

It had broken something, and 309 knew it, broken the fragile trust between them, and all for one fleeting touch of her wrist.

Was it worth it?

No. Yes. Both. It wanted more, and the long night hours 309 filled with a fantasy it knew would melt into obscenity in the light of day: of her coming to it, stripping off her uniform, peeling off its coveralls, and laying against its body. Just...that. Its brain, its body, refused to go further than that, just her warm, supple curves, her skin like satin, the soft circles of her breasts, and the swell of her waist, pressed against the withered, wasted frame, and it’d breathe in the scent of her, feel her aliveness against it head to toe, feel her hair tickle the bare, bony shoulder, palms wandering, not unwelcome, down her back, the channel of her spine. There could be no more--its body couldn’t do those things, not anymore, even if it ever had.

Had it ever? Was it a virgin or was this another thing 309 had lost in the void of the Then? Which was worse, then, to never have had a pleasure, or to have had it and lost it? It didn’t know. It wasn’t a philosopher, it was just a thing, a subject, a monstrosity, a withered creature in a man’s body, but not--hardly--a man.

This was Hunger’s cousin, this desire, as sharp in its belly, formless and restless as Hunger itself.

_You control people through the things they want and don’t want._

_Is he a person?_

_Primitively._

_So?_

_Food, and avoidance of pain. Primitive impulses, primitive being._

“Don’t...scare me like that again,” she said, the next day, trying to wrap her fear in a laugh, trying to make it into something silly, and thus safe. It had nodded, it was all it could do, and behaved itself, as best he could, though the black eyes were crowded with the idea of her, closer, against it, and 309 could swear it smelled her skin from here.

It wasn’t enough just to see her, it was like giving a starving man a crumb, it was almost crueler than giving him nothing. 309 settled on its knees, at the end of the chains, and reached one hand out along the floor, palm up. It dropped lower, onto its belly, to look--to be--as helpless as possible, as harmless as it could, as low and abased as possible-- stretching a hand, the chains tinking together, toward her. 309 was so thin that the manacle slid halfway up the forearm, leaving a line of a bruise along the stick of a wrist. 309 didn’t look at her face, not this time. If she would reject it, 309 wanted to spare itself the look of loathing or contempt on her face. All it wanted was a fingertip, a hand, an inch of skin on its. So little, so much. It stared at the floor instead and tried not to count out the seconds.

Maybe she didn’t know what it wanted, maybe it wasn’t clear.

She moved, and it could hear the scuffle of her boots, the shift of cloth, and then the warmth against its hand, her palm touching its, lightly, as though it was a detonator plate of a mine, primed to explode.

Something burst within 309, a hot white heat that brought no pain, filling it with a kind of electricity. The other hand moved, just the fingertips brushing the back of hers, trying to reassure her this was no trap, this was all it wanted.

It wasn’t true. It wanted far more: it wanted all of her bare flesh pressed against it, wanted to have her heat melt the ice of its veins. But this would do, 309 would make this do, make this be enough, and the fact that she had done this, it hadn’t had to trick or snatch at her wrist, made it all the sweeter, somehow. Someone, touching it not to bind or inject or beat him.

It was a new experience.

The idea of a kiss entered its mind, piercing the veil from before the Then, but it dismissed it, repulsed by the idea of her beautiful skin and it repulsive, loathsome mouth, still clotted with rat’s blood, her friend's blood blackening the gums. It was a blasphemy, 309 thought, and so it just lay there, holding her hand, savoring it the way it never could with food--the Hunger made it too much to waste a second. This new hunger, this need, was slower, used to privation, able to feed itself on crumbs and dreams.

It had no idea what she thought, sitting there, though it felt her wrist relax, after a time, no longer tensed and ready to jerk back. All it knew, all that mattered, was that she let it hold her hand, palm on its. It wasn’t the way normal people did it, this was a supplication and a pity, but it was more than 309 had ever had, so it fought the whining cry as she whispered, her voice unsteady, “I have to go.”

The hand slipped from its, one last movement, satin on old leather, flesh and blood against its dead tendons. It heard her take up the tray and leave, but it still lay, face down on the steel, trying to extend the moment into forever, as close as it could come to prayer.

_Sex?_

_Can you imagine?_

_I’d rather not._

_They can’t. Physically incapable, entirely neutralized._

_But the anatomy?_

_Vestigial at this point._

_So he has no desires?_

_None._

309 was still there, prostrate, when they came for it, the other soldiers. Three of them, from the first day, the one with his forearm still bandaged. 309 had been in a reverie, pushing up, back to the far side of the cell, still on its knees, black eyes darting from one to the other. It knew enough of soldiers to be wary, to read danger in their movement. He knew they would beat him, but it’d been beaten before. It didn’t hurt; it couldn’t. It was just a thing that happened in its world, that soldiers came, and struck and kicked and shot and worse. The words hurt worse than the blows, though its body was not immune to damage. The bones could break, with enough force, the skin tear. 309 could be broken, without pain, and had been, time and again.

In the Station, in the Then, they’d known that the real pain came for it afterwards, when the altered body began to heal, fixing wounds that would be lethal to normal men. Just another reminder it was neither. In the Station, it had been part of his ‘tests’--309 had to be injured to let its healing be studied. It was logic, colder and harder than the chains around its limbs. It had been shot, stabbed, poisoned, electrocuted, gassed: all the terrible ways man has come to kill his own kind, and come away, each time, only more scarred, grieving that it could still breathe.

There were no doctors here; this wasn’t a test. This was revenge, simply and brutally. 309 had bitten one of them. That had been wrong. So it let them, unresisting, grunting as the heavy boots slammed into the ribs, one hard enough to cause it to puke up the food it had eaten; stomp hard on the wrist around the manacle till it gave with a wet crack. Its head met steel a dozen times--the floor, their boots, a knife’s handle, skull cracking like a boiled egg. They beat 309 till black ichor leaked from its mouth, drooling over the chin, till their fists were split and bruised, their legs tired from kicking, till the coveralls were torn to uselessness, spitting imprecations at it like venom. Names it had heard before, but some things time and repetition did not dull.

It was full dark when they left, and 309 felt a dulled gratitude for it, curling into itself against the far wall, the links of chain scraping its chafed skin, closing swollen eyes, wishing for the hundredth time that it could sleep, that it could fall into some blissful but temporary break before the pain came. It summoned up, with effort, the touch of Esperay’s hand, the warm palm against its clay-cold one. It was like a memory of a bonfire, light with no heat, giving only a thin, illusory comfort.

It was one more thing stolen from 309, that the one happy memory it had should be smeared and marred like this. It felt a faint anger, like a veil, like a desultory desert breeze, fall over it, a coolness that would only build in the coming hours as its body cycled into healing, raging through veins and nerves like cold fire, like acid, tearing wordless screams from a throat that echoed in the small chamber, ringing his ears.

309 rolled, thrashed, tangling in the chains, shredding the tatters of the coveralls in agony. Even food did not help, hunger had deserted it: and the only food it had left was the vomit from before.

Its bones healed--first crooked, as they were found, then twisting themselves like angry serpents, wrenching themselves straight. The cuts healed, new flesh flinging itself across the chasm of the wound, old skin sloughing, scabby and clotted. The broken arm, the broken ribs, the bruises, enough to kill a man twice over, all on their way to healing, all delivering as much agony and punishment as the soldiers could desire. It was pain, it was hell’s worst nightmare, and if 309 were human and could have a wish, because wishes were not things for monsters, it would be that it could die.

_Some unknown factor in the biosystem. It must be._

_I don't care what it is. Find it. Fix it._

_The core of science is replicability._

_We're trying._

_Try harder._

309 couldn’t die. Nothing they’d ever done to it had been able to kill it. And they’d tried, the failure becoming a success, in its failure to die when they were done with him. 309 couldn’t die, but it could suffer.

309 was so lost to pain, to agony, throat raw from screaming, that it didn’t hear the door open, the hinges squeaking to life the heavy steel. It heard nothing until a voice--her voice--gave a curse, and it felt the floor take weight as she dropped to one knee next to it.

“Chi zi Krismet,” she said, an old obscenity, tugging a field dressing from her thigh pocket. “I swear I am going to fucking kill Jorvax.” 309 could feel her anger, like heat, blinding her to her own danger. She was within range, fully, and it was dangerous. It couldn’t warn her, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but ride along as the pain mastered it. 309 rose, standing to its full height, for the first time since they’d found it, the first time since, back in the Station, it’d risen up, looking for lost masters, trying to pry something from the doorframe. 309 towered over her, misshapen scalp nearly brushing the ceiling, arms, too long, loomed around her, snares she couldn’t hope to escape.

The hands ripped at her clothes, fingers which had gouged concrete found the canvas of her combat jacket no obstacle, the cloth screaming as it tore. 309 was desperate to get to her, to that bare, silky skin it had dared to dream of. It was pain flogging that Want into darkness, blindly grasping at comfort, at anything that promised relief.

It was--she was--exactly as it’d imagined, her body all curves and lines, full muscle so unlike 309’s own wasted arms, contrasting with soft roundness. And life. It could feel it pulsing through her, under the blood, the warm bright thread of being alive, having a past and future and connecting lines in between. It could feel it, hear it, smell it on her, and it buried itself in it, nuzzling against her throat, hands curving around her ribs, pressing her to it, the heat of her body leaching off the worst of the cold burn of the unholy healing. It could feel her heartbeat. it could feel her breathing--ribs pushing against its hands in uneven bursts. Itcould feel her hair, escaping from its tie, softer than a feather against its cheek, stirred by its rank breath. It drowned itself in it, in her, in the essence of life, in the smell of sweat and fear and health and all the things it wasn't, half-hoping to dissolve.

"No," she said, a bleat, pushed from panicked lungs, her hands ineffectual on lean shoulders, legs twisting helplessly, uselessly, gaunt muscles like cords of iron.

309 stopped, the word ringing through it, like a stone flung down a hollow place, catching on the sides. No. How many times had it screamed it, even when the lungs had broken, when its mind could no longer make words, how many times had it flung that abjection, that refusal of horror, against what was happening to it? It'd sobbed it, screamed it, howled it in rage, in every emotion of the human heart, until its heart was no longer human, and it had gone unanswered.

It answered this, hands stilling against her body, holding her still for a long moment before gingerly, carefully, as though she might fly apart, setting her feet back on the ground. It had begged and no one had heard. It could hear. It knew too well what it meant to cry that word in fear, and it couldn't do that to another. It was a monster, and only men did not hear 'no'.

309 fell back, the icy blaze of the body's processes sweeping over it again, sucking the temperature from the room through the long rends and tears in its coveralls, grey skin, scarred like a tiger's from a hundred old injuries, staring through as it stumbled back, ashamed and wrong, falling to the decking. It could still see her, that hyperaware vision still keen, as she shivered, tugging her shredded, ruined jacket over her, trying to cover the warm round fullness of her breasts, the beautiful hollows of her collarbones. Part of 309 still hungered for her, mind reaching for those peeks of bareness, violating her even so, even as the rest of it tried to turn away, hiding its face in lieu of the apology it could never make.

“No!” she repeated, louder this time, stronger, the voice less a sob than an insistence. “How could you! I thought--Chesu.” She was panting from emotion, anger, fear, resentment, tangled together. “You don’t think I face that enough from them, out there?” She jerked her head to the cell’s door. “You think I asked to be taken by every man as nothing more than tits and a pussy? No matter what I do, how much I do, how goddam fucking good I am, I’m still just...just this to them. Act like them, and I’m an ice cold bitch. Try to be nice, decent, human, and I’m a slut for the fucking taking.” It was an old, rancid anger boiling through her words. “And you?!”

309 saw the blow coming, saw it probably before she knew she’d throw it, and it rose to meet it, on its knees, tilting the head so the fist landed squarely. It didn’t hurt. It never did. It would hurt later. But it wouldn’t duck away from what 309 deserved.

Esperay looked stunned--more than it did--as the blow hit, its chin swinging hard to one side, as though appalled, ashamed, at what she’d done. Her hand fell to her side, limp, some of the black ichor of his blood smearing her knuckles from 309’s split cheek. “I...I just thought you’d be different.”

All the insults, imprecations, names it had been called, and that one hurt worst of all, somehow, like a hole punched through its bony chest. 309 dropped back onto itss heels, bowing itshead, feeling the cool drip of blood down the chin, onto a leg, like tears it couldn’t shed. It was the Hunger, it wanted to say, or its close cousin, that lingering, sharp toothed desire, and the pain fogging its mind, making it less and less, not a man, not a once-man, but a thing, a blind, pitiful creature seeking comfort, but evil enough that it didn’t care how it got it.

“I thought you’d be different,” she repeated, softly, shaking her head, falling onto her knees, the words a surrender, an admission, as though saying ‘how stupid I was’.

309 squeezed its eyes shut, wishing for tears, sleep, unconsciousness, any of the things that were lost to it, something to stop or still or slow the whirling chaos of its mind. It couldn’t fix this, couldn’t fix itself, couldn’t undo what it’d done or what it was, or what was still circling the shadowed edges of its mind, to aware of her so near it, smelling her sweat and fear and the coppersalt of her blood.

It reached behind it, blindly, long arms finding the blanket they’d given, a gesture of something like consideration, and held it out to her, tumbling unfolded, tugging it over her shoulders. It was something--not enough, not even nearly so--but 309 felt her tip forward, pulling the blanket around her, and in some strange thing another might call a miracle, but 309 had given up on anything like that for itself, she leaned closer, into the circle of too-long arms, resting her head against its shoulder, and 309 held her while she cried the tears it couldn’t.

_We got a laundry list of what a perfect soldier would be:_

_We took all of these and did our best._

 


End file.
